You have to understand that, again, love can be of four types.One: you simply ask; that is immature love. A child simply asks. He cannot give, in the first place; he does not know how to give. He is a child, he can be forgiven. He asks the mother, he asks the father, he asks everybody. Everybody should love him; he is very demanding. But one has to grow out of it. This is very immature.

The first kind of love is immature love, when you demand: you say, “Give me this, give me that. If you give me, I will know you love me; if you don’t give me, then certainly you don’t love me.” That is the only way the child knows whether you love him or not. If you bring him more toys, more ice cream, more things, then he knows you love him. He can understand only one language — that is of giving him things; give to him.This is not wrong, every child has to pass this phase.

But many people remain stuck there. Then they have become grown-up — they may have their own children. The man may now be forty, maybe having three children of his own, and still he goes on demanding. A man of forty comes home and he waits for the child to give him a kiss, and he says, “Look, Daddy is here. Now give the kiss.” What type of daddy are you? You are still immature, you are still asking. And this type of man will ask for love from the wife, and this type of woman will ask for love from the husband; everybody asking, and nobody ready to give; all children, nobody mature enough to give. Hence so much conflict.

The second higher type of love, is when you start giving — when you give, and you don’t bother about whether others are giving to you or not. But remember, you can get stuck in the second too. One can get stuck so much that one will not allow somebody to give one anything.

The missionary, the do-gooder, these people, they will not allow. If you allow them to do something good for you, they are ready, but they will not take anything back –because that is against their ego. How can they take? They are mature people; they only give, they don’t take. They have moved to another extreme. They are more mature than the first, but there is still another maturity.

This is again ego: “I can only give.”One man I know is a rich man, a very rich man, and he has been giving all sorts of help to his relatives, friends. He has distributed much of his money. He used to come to me. He said once, “One thing I could never figure out: I have been helping everybody, but nobody ever feels grateful towards me.”And I know he has tried — he has been helping, he is REALLY generous, a rare generous man.

You just give him a hint and he will give; whatsoever he can give he will give. He will never say no. And he has given: all his relatives and friends have become rich because of him. And this too I know: that nobody is grateful towards him. And I told him, “You may not like it, but the problem is: you always give, you never allow them to give anything to you. You are too egoistic… generous, but you cannot conceive of receiving anything from anybody. That is against your ego.”He pondered over it. He started crying. He said, “Maybe this is true. I have never taken anybody’s help in my life. I am a self-made man. I can give, but I cannot receive. Maybe you are right.”I said, “There is no need to receive big things, but small things. Just tell somebody,’I am feeling ill; you come and sit by my side and I will feel happy’ — that will do.

Small things — but give the other a chance to also show his love towards you. Otherwise he is always burdened, and burdened. And when one is burdened, one can never forgive you.”

So the third type of love is when a person can take and give — can easily take, can easily give — and there is no problem. The flow is equal, just like breathing in and breathing out. This is the third type of love; very mature.

And the fourth, the last, is when you don’t know what is giving and what is taking. Because the other is no more there, you are part of the whole.